Because of the one hour timezone change, I put myself on a sleep schedule to help me get out everyday .. 10:30pm sleep, 6:30am wake up. Including exercise, breakfast, etc. it currently takes about 90 minutes from when I wake up to get ready for the day. Perhaps I can optimize this in the future.
On Friday, my last day in Seoul, I went for the exercise bike instead of the usual treadmill run. I went through a few minutes of casual pedaling and then put the bike into a medium difficulty to pedal for 5+ minutes. Following this, I pedaled a few minutes to warm down. This cardio preceded my regular swiss ball exercises.
Throughout Friday, everything was normal and I felt great from the workouts I was able to get in that week. However, I apparently did something wrong that caused my body to have a strong reaction on Saturday morning.
While I was gone in Seoul, a little bug had made its way into our family and had been making the rounds .. my wife, kids, sister-in-law, etc. were all getting something. Well, it took me just Friday morning to tip the scales in favor of the virus. I was sick in the morning and not feeling well.
To make matters even worse, when I woke up on Saturday, I stretched my legs in one particular way that made my calfs cramp up. Probably the worst cramps I have ever had. It's hard to explain how painful it was but just imagine getting your leg stuck in a vise and being squeezed really hard.
I spent the better part of the day massaging my legs on occasion and just relaxing as much as I could. After reading a few articles on the net about calf cramps, I found out that it may be due to:
- Dehydration
- Lack of salts
- Insufficient warm up / warm down
Perhaps change in sleep times also was a contributing factor.
In any case, I focused on getting more water and drinking a sports drink to recover needed salts in the body. Doing this actually helped prevent a reoccurrence of cramps and my legs feel much better as a result.
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